1. Field
The present invention relates to information processing apparatuses and, more particularly, to an information processing apparatus to which various devices, such as a USB device, can be connected.
2. Description of the Related Art
USB devices, such as USB storages or USB mice, or PCI/IDE devices, such as optical disk drives, can be detachably connected to information processing apparatuses, such as personal computers.
Some of the above devices have important information and/or secret information stored therein. Only certain persons, for example, the managers of the information processing apparatuses are permitted to access such devices, and the other general users are inhibited from accessing such devices or performing specific operations to such devices.
JP-A 2006-58949 discloses a technology relating to USB devices, the use of which is restricted for every user.
There are two approaches to impose use restriction and functional restriction (hereinafter collectively referred to as access restriction) on a device at the information processing apparatus side, rather than at the device side.
One approach is to impose the access restriction on the device by utility software (hereinafter simply referred to as a utility) in the OS. This approach has the advantage of setting the content of the access restriction in detail. For example, it is possible to permit readout of data from an optical disk drive and to inhibit writing of data on the optical disk drive. However, when the utility is uninstalled or the OS is reinstalled, this approach has the disadvantage of easily disabling the set access restriction.
The other approach is to impose the access restriction on the device in the level of firmware, that is, in the BIOS level. In this case, the access restriction cannot be easily externally removed because the BIOS is incorporated in the device. However, it is difficult to set the access restriction in detail in the BIOS level. For example, when the access restriction is to be imposed on a USB storage, the access restriction is imposed on all the USB devices. As a result, it is not possible to use even the mouse, thereby loosing the flexibility and damaging the usability.